William Blake: Brothers' Bones Beside - Catalog - Page 18
Stag Dance
Oil on linen | 69" x 54" | 2025
In the summer of 2024, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a
father and son reenacted a Civil War “stag dance” at the Kent
Cultural Alliance in Chestertown. These all-male dances,
where Union soldiers paired off and danced in barns, tents,
or on ships, were both celebratory and contested. In one
reported case, soldiers fought at the entrance of a barn for
the chance to dance together.
This painting reenacts a stag dance aboard the deck of the
USS Monitor, with father and son naval reenactors in a waltz.
The work invites questions about nostalgia, what we choose
to remember, re-perform, or preserve. Here, masculinity and
longing are filtered through layers of play and inheritance. The
stag dance becomes less about war than about the fantasy of it:
a private romance with history, rehearsed and passed down.. n
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